PBTO18: Building Multi-Billion Product Categories by Segmentation

Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we host Dr. Howard Moskowitz and Stephen Rappaport.

Dr. Howard is a market researcher and psychophysicist. He is best known for the detailed study he made of the types of spaghetti sauce and horizontal segmentation. He is CEO of i-Novation Inc & has written/edited sixteen books, and has published more than 300 articles. 

Steve consults and writes about brand growth through consumer insight, digital strategy and measurement.  He is the author of 3 books The Online Advertising Playbook, Listen First! and his latest one being The Digital Metrics Field Guide:

Why are they on the show

In his 40-year career span, Howard has literally helped create billion dollar product line in the food industry. He has also won numerous awards for outstanding research including The Market Research Council Hall of Fame Award. Malcolm Gladwell did an entire TED Talk focusing on Howard’s work.

Both of them research and write about comprehending people using the science of mind genomics in a specialized area called cognitive economics.

What are we talking about

In this free wheeling conversation, we talk about mind genomics, cognitive economics and how it is much more effective to segment the market based on, what they call Vignettes and/or mindsets rather than the usual demographic, psychographic or behavioral segmentation and how can businesses understand their customers best by their behavior and preferences.

Most important learnings from the conversation:

• Market Segmentation: 
  • It is critical for brands to understand the fact that there is no perfect product but a set of perfect products, i.e, an opportunity for horizontal segmentation.
  • Once brands understand the mindsets of their customers and tailor their messaging accordingly, the conversion rates can at times even double.

You can find more information about their work and connect with them on their email ID’s: (Howard & Stephen). You can follow Steve on twitter @steverappaport.

PS: The TED Talk that Malcolm Gladwell delivered based on Dr. Howards work is here: